12:31 AM,
Jun. 26, 2013

Written by

After World War II proved the varied and valuable uses of computer technology, there was a rush to find more reliable and faster components to replace the huge, power-consuming machines that used thousands of vacuum tubes to amplify and switch the electrical current that enabled the complex calculations.

In 1945, AT&T's Bell Labs established a solid-state physics laboratory led by William Shockley with John Bardeen, Walter Brattain and others forming a team to investigate how to make a reliable semiconductor based on Shockley's theories. Shockley had been a rising star at Bell Labs ...